An alternative to “Inbound Marketing”? (Poll)

I awoke this morning to see a flurry of activity jamming up my Twitter feed talking about possible alternatives to the “Inbound Marketing” phrase. I know many people in the industry are not completely comfortable with the term (myself included) so I was extremely interested to see the alternatives being suggested. The debate itself had been sparked by Rand Fiskin (co-founder of inbound.org) himself, credit to Rand for putting the question “out there”.

Why need another name – all these activities are MARKETING.
The whole inbound, outbount, content marketing, SEO…is just terms vendors and consulting come up with. 10 yearf from now they will be forgotten, just like we forgot telemarketing or other terms from previous decades. Yet MARKETING will continue to exist.

Gonna have to agree with Ian on this one, all marketing activity (media) is either earned or purchased. I don’t much care for the ‘inbound marketing’ term as a “term to replace SEO” but I think there is some merit to it as a solid description for describing activities which drive traffic or eyeballs to a digital asset(s).

Of all of these terms the only one that really sticks out for me as having no place here is unmarketing, I understand the carrot here but I have never been a fan of calling something exactly what it isn’t – at the end of the day, it’s ALL marketing.